Reade

“ A young man fighting for a place in literature, and for bread and butter at the same time, need not blush at being censured for adopting a literary field in which Charles Reade spent so many years of his life. ”

“ Indeed, Charles Reade's array of characters sometimes reminds us of the simple system of Plautus, in which we have for every play the same types of people—the rather stingy father, the embarrassed lover, the clever comic slave, and so forth. It cannot be said that Reade has added a single character to fiction. He understands human nature, or at least such types of it as he habitually selects, very well, and he draws vigorously his figures and groups ”

“ Consider! That was one of Charles Reade's favorite expressions, and just hearing him say the word used to make me consider, and think, and come to conclusions—perhaps not always the conclusions that he wished, but suggested by him.
In this matter of "ardent" exit, he wrote:
"The swift rush of the words, the personal rush, should carry you off the stage. ”

“ I have the terms of my dedication in mind still, and I remember that I wrote of a great genius which has always been put to lofty uses. Reade's letter in response has always held a place amongst my treasures. “It is no discredit,” he wrote, “for a young man to appreciate his seniors beyond their merits.” I have always thought that very noble and modest and well-said. Reade is the only one of the writers who in my own boyhood were already reckoned great with whom it was my happiness to come into personal contact. ”

“ It was characteristic of Reade's open and combative nature that he admitted the public freely to the secrets of his method of composition. He spoke about his method in his prefaces; he introduced himself into one of his novels—“ Dr Rolfe ” in A Terrible Temptation; and by his will he left his workshop and his accumulation of materials open for inspection for two years after his death. He had collected an enormous mass of materials for his study of human nature, from personal observation, from newspapers, books of travel, blue-books of commissions of inquiry, from miscellaneous reading. ”

“ This list shows that Charles Reade is the author, or joint-author—in four plays and one novel—of nineteen different stories, ranging in length from one-third of a volume to four volumes: and of eighteen dramatic works.
Now it certainly argues some want of real knowledge or study in the critics of the day, that they cannot assign his place, whatever that may be, to this writer. They can place inferior authors, but they really and honestly have no notion where this man stands, either as a novelist, or dramatist, or both. ”

“ He made the women's bosoms pant and swell, and seem to aspire to be the nests and cradles of heroes, and their eyes flash and glisten, and their cheeks flush and grow pale by turns; and the four little papered walls that confined them seemed to fall without noise, and they were away in thought out of a carpeted temple of wax, small talk, nonentity, and nonentities, away to sea-breezes that they almost felt in their hair and round their temples as their hearts rose and fell upon a broad swell of passion, perils, waves, male men, realities. ”

“ WOFF. That is the first step—reading comes after, when it comes at all.
TRIP. (aside) . I must fly home and tell my wife.
WOFF. (aside) . In the mean time I can put five guineas into his pocket. Mr. Triplet, do you write congratulatory verses—odes—and that sort of thing?
TRIP. Anything, madam, from an acrostic to an epic.
WOFF. Good, then I have a commission for you; I dine to-day at Mr. Vane’s, in Bloomsbury Square. We shall want some verses. Will you oblige us with a copy?
TRIP. (aside) . A guinea in my way, at least. Oh, madam, do but give me a subject. ”

“ Wit has been too strong for iron bars ere to-day."
"Ay, father; but nature is stronger than wit, and she is against us. Think of the height! No ladder in Holland might reach him."
"I need no ladder; what I need is a gold crown."
"Nay. I have money for that matter. I have nine angels. Gerard gave them me to keep; but what do they avail? ”

“ Vary the pace. Charles Reade was never tired of saying this, and, indeed, it is one of the foundations of all good acting. ”

“ We have heard numberless inquiries as to Mr. Reade's private life, with which, whether they have the right or not, the public will concern itself. So at home is he on every subject that each appears to be his specialty. ”

“ From those who had figured in the life of royal courts, he inherited a romantic nature, a love of art, and a very delicate perception of the niceties of cultivated usage. Such was Charles Reade—keen observer, scholar, Bohemian—a man who could be both rough and tender, and whose boisterous ways never concealed his warm heart.
Reade's school-days were Spartan in their severity. A teacher with the appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned him unmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have been crushed. ”

“ He said so.
"I had a teacher before thee, Gerar-do. Ay, and one as handsome as thyself." She then went to a drawer, and brought out several heads drawn with a complete ignorance of the art, but with great patience and natural talent. They were all heads of Gerard, and full of spirit: and really not unlike. One was his very image.
"There," said she. "Now thou seest who was my teacher."
"Not I, signora."
"What, know you not who teaches us women to do all things? 'Tis love, Gerar-do. Love made me draw because thou drawest, Gerar-do. Love prints thine image in my bosom. ”

“ Although we place two of Charles Reade's books first in their respective classes—'Foul Play' in the class of novels called sensational, and 'The Cloister and the Hearth' in that of the purely imaginative—yet his books, taken throughout, are of more even merit than those of almost any other novelist. They are written in English as pure, as simple, and as truly Saxon as any this century has produced: in a literary style—nervous, vigorous, and masculine—with which the most captious and partisan critic cannot find any fault. ”

“ This worried Gerard. “I cannot lie still and hear it said that mortal man bestowed the parts which Adam our father took from Him, who made him of the clay, and us his sons.”
“Was ever such perversity?” said the doctor, his colour rising. “Who is the real donor of a thing to man? he who plants it secretly in the dark recesses of man's body, or the learned wight who reveals it to his intelligence, and so enriches his mind with the knowledge of it? Comprehension is your only true possession. Are you answered?”
“I am put to silence, sir.” ”

“ Then, in her simplicity, she said, “And I will show you some things, in his own handwriting, that may be good for you; but I can't show you the whole book: some of it is sacred from every eye but his wife's. His wife's? Ah me! his widow's.”
Then she pointed out passages in the diary that she thought might be for his good; and he nestled to her side, and followed her white finger with loving eyes, and was in an elysium—which she would certainly have put a stop to at that time, had she divined it. But all wisdom does not come at once to an unguarded woman. ”

“ At length, in 1856, Reade marked a distinct epoch in his literary career by completing a largely planned novel, ‘It is Never Too Late to Mend’ (London, 3 vols. 12mo) . Thenceforth he chiefly devoted himself to the enhancement of his reputation as a novelist, but he made it a leading aim of his works of fiction to expose notorious social abuses. ‘It is never too late to mend,’ which was accurately described on its title-page as ‘a matter-of-fact romance,’ illustrated with extraordinary power the abuses of prison discipline both in England and Australia. ”

“ Most of them were boys, and a young woman took pity on one fair urchin. "Alas! dear child," said she, "why wound thy white skin so?" "Basta," said he, laughing, "'tis for your sins I do it, not for mine."
"Hear you that?" said the friar. "Show me the whip that can whip the vanity out of man's heart! The young monkey; how knoweth he that stranger is a sinner more than he?"
"Father," said Gerard, "surely this is not to our Lord's mind. He was so pitiful."
"Our Lord?" said the friar, crossing himself. "What has he to do with this? This was a custom in Rome six hundred years before he was born. ”

“ Paint me an abstract human being, neither man nor a woman,” said he, “and then I will agree to paint a tree that shall be no tree; and, if no man will buy it, perhaps the father of lies will take it off my hands, and hang it in the only place it would not disgrace.” ”

“ Then he has a way of forcing Nature, much against her wish, to be epigrammatic,—of producing startling effects by artifices almost theatrical; and though his devices are obvious, they are more than forgiven for the genuine power and real naturalness behind the rhetorical masquerade. Other men's freaks and eccentricities lead to the distortion of truth and the confusion of relations, but Mr. Reade has freaks of wisdom and eccentricities of practical sagacity. ”

“ They have a tremendous regard for Reade. Carry yourself as if you were the undoubted inheritor of the Reade traditions. Think how Reade himself would have borne himself—then strike out from it all the bumptious and aggressive parts—and be the rest. Two things destroy a man in America. One is the suggestion of personal eccentricity, Bohemianism, etc. The other is a disposition for criticism and controversy on their own subjects. The latter is the more dangerous of the two. It is a people devoured by the newspaper habit, like the Irish or the old Greeks of the Areopagus. ”

“ Around him thronged the chiefs of Pethor-land
And others, from afar, who came to hear
The wisdom God had given to his lips.
But he was still as humble as the child
That played of yore amid the flowers, and drew
From their sweet breath the beauty of the good.
And as he spoke, they listened to his words
As to an angel’s: for his words were wise,
Wiser than all the wisdom of the East. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVII. CURTAIN. Striking incidents will draw the writer; but we know that our readers would rather hear about the characters they can respect. It seems, however, to be a rule in life, and in fiction, that interest flags when trouble ceases. Now the troubles of our good people were pretty well over, and we will put it to the reader whether they had not enough.
Grace Clifford made an earnest request to Colonel Clifford and her father never to tell Walter he had been suspected of bigamy. "Let others say that circumstances are always to be believed and character not to be trusted ”

“ Stout as young Little's heart was, it fainted now when he saw his bedstead, and his drawers, and his chairs, all slowly rising toward the ceiling, lifted by that cold, putrescent, liquid death.
But all men, and even animals, possess greater powers of mind, as well as of body, than they ever exert, unless compelled by dire necessity: and it would have been strange indeed if a heart so stanch, and a brain so inventive, as Little's, had let his darling die like a rat drowned in a hole, without some new and masterly attempt first made to save her. ”

“ Reade prepared a dramatic version, which was entitled ‘Free Labour,’ and was produced in May 1870. Mr. Henry Neville proved an effective impersonator of the hero, Henry Little. ‘A Terrible Temptation, a story of the day,’ Reade's next work of fiction, he contributed as a serial to ‘Cassell's Magazine,’ and published in 1871 (3 vols.) ”

“ Besides, the servants of the Muse are used to waiting. What we are not used to is (she fills his glass) being waited on by Hebe and the Twelve Graces, whose health I have the honour!—Falernian, as I’m a poet!
MABEL. A poet! (clapping her hands.) Oh, I am so glad! I never thought to see a living poet; I do so love poetry!
TRIP. Ha! it is in your face, madam. I should be proud to have your opinion of this trifle composed by me for Mr. Vane, in honour of the lady he expected this morning.
MABEL (aside) . Dear Ernest! how ungrateful I was. Nay, sir, I think I know the lady ”

“ Gerard gave a little start; the spoken voice broke a charm and brought him back to earth.
“Oh, madam!” he cried, “surely it is thus that cherubs and seraphs sing, and charm the saints in heaven.”
“I am somewhat of your opinion, my young friend,” said the Countess, with emotion; and she bent a look of love and gentle pride upon her girl: a heavenly look, such as, they say, is given to the eye of the short-lived resting on the short-lived. ”

“ Fountains in every street that play to heaven, and in the gardens seeming trees, which being approached, one standing afar touches a spring, and every twig shoots water, and souses the guests to their host's much delectation. Big culverins of war they cast with no more ado than our folk horse-shoes, and have done this fourscore years. All stuffs they weave, and linen fine as ours at home, or nearly, which elsewhere in Europe vainly shall ye seek. Sir Printing Press—sore foe to poor Gerard, but to other humans beneficial—plieth by night and day, and casteth goodly words like sower afield ”

“ Society is your place. You are at home in it, and were born to shine in it.”
“What makes you think that, pray?” and the widow's cheek flushed a little.
“Oh, Mrs. Little, I have seen something of the world. Count me amongst your most respectful admirers. It is a sentiment I have a right to, since I inherit it.”
“Well, Mr. Coventry, then I give you leave to admire me—if you can. Ah, here they come. Two minutes! I am afraid it was neither gossip nor flirtation, but only botany.”
Grace and Henry came back, looking very radiant. ”